


Blood and Ether

by Gileonnen



Series: The Hand That Wields the Sword [3]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Ether Intoxication, Fear of Flying, M/M, Ownership Kink, Romantic Murder Stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-06-30 13:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19853941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: When the abyss must be crossed, nothing but a ship will do.The Spider and Kalith pass the time with bloody stories as they travel between worlds.





	Blood and Ether

A ship is the worst kind of cage. Pierce its shielding and its fragile hull, and those imprisoned inside are exposed to the freezing void--the airless, etherless abyss from which there is no returning. Even the shifting surfaces of the Tangled Shore offer a thousand coves and bolt-holes, a maze of rock and rubble that a few well-placed walls of hard light can turn into a fortress. You could run forever across that broken plain.

But when the abyss must be crossed, nothing but a ship will do, and so the Spider sits in the passenger cabin of his well-armed skiff and tries not to think about its exoskeleton cracking.

He occupies his hands with a Lightless Ghost shell, turning the pieces over and over and feeling how they catch and click. This one is almost pristine. Only one scratch in its green-and-copper paint, the perfect size for his claw to trace and retrace. This shell had been gift from a Scorn captain trying to return to his good graces, after the barons fell.

His people had put spears through that slick, dead flesh all the same. He'd been in this game too long to let himself make deals with the Scorn.

"Something's on your mind," says Kalith, low. "Does this trip have another purpose that I should know about? Something to do with your brother?"

The Spider raises his gaze from the shell. Unbidden, he narrows his eyes in pleasure at the sight of his Guardian--slim and erect, armored in white and gold, armed with a curved Reef-made blade. Like so many humans, Kalith prefers to go without his helmet among people he likes, and his concern is easy to read in expression. _Worried that I'm leading him into a trap,_ the Spider thinks, almost fondly. _He knows the Earth legend of the Spider and the fly better than I do._

"And what makes you ask that, my clever friend?" the Spider asks, because it's more interesting than saying _No._

"Your hands," Kalith answers. "They haven't been still since we left the Shore."

"I have enemies everywhere. The Reef, the Shore--even Earth," the Spider says. He knows that it isn't quite an answer.

"You have me." Kalith's voice is still quiet, but it echoes from the bulkheads. He dips his head, a fractional gesture of deference. The reverence in his eyes is real, the Spider likes to imagine--or at least, more than a game. "Your enemies are mine."

The Spider shifts his ghost shell to a free hand and crooks a finger, gesturing Kalith closer. "You'd fight the universe for me, wouldn't you," he says. Beneath his rebreather, his mandibles twitch in pleasure. "Cut down the Cabal, burn through the Hive, put an arrow through every Fallen foe who sets foot on my Shore."

He can almost feel Kalith's skin prickling--that electrical current of emotion that sings up and down his nerves, that anxious spark that has nothing to do with Light. But Kalith doesn't hesitate as he kneels at his side. "I would."

The Spider traces his fingertips across Kalith's smooth, defenseless cheek, then tips up his chin with the point of a claw. "Tell me more."

Kalith's eyes go wide, then narrow. In humans, that expression says _suspicion_ ; he knows there's an angle, but he can't quite calculate it from the points that he can see. It's one of the things that the Spider likes best about his pet Guardian--he knows better than to trust.

But trust he does, all the same.

Kalith licks his soft lips. His voice is low and urgent; there's a melody to it, a lilt and a wandering cadence, as though he's trying to shape his words to poetry. "You know what I would do for you. I've come to you stained in the ether of your enemies. Your people have seen their bodies line the Shore."

"Go on," the Spider says. "Tell me how you did it."

"What do you want me to say?" Kalith tilts his head to kiss the Spider's thumb, the valley of his palm. "How they came at me in their dozens in Soriks's Cut, and how I flung blades of flame at them until they fell? Or do you want the screams, as well?"

Pleasure coils in the Spider's gut. He wants the screams--he wants the blood and the stench, the slop of guts through armor and the spill of oil and ether. He wants limbs hacked off, throats opened, grasping mandibles slowly ceasing to twitch. Anything foul and visceral enough to drive out the fear of being bottled up in this tiny raft of air amid a sea of darkness. "I want it all," he says, and Kalith shudders.

He draws Kalith up by the chin and urges him to sit astride one powerful thigh; his exoskeleton flexes slightly under the weight, but only enough that the Spider feels the pressure from knee to hip. Kalith curls in close, gloved fingertips finding the exposed skin beneath the Spider's rebreather. He gives another little shiver, as though a sudden chill has licked through him. Maybe it's only the close cold burn of bottled ether, but the Spider likes to think it's the now-familiar pleasure of being permitted to touch.

He draws Kalith still closer, all four arms wrapped around him, until the pressure of his body almost blots out the anxious itch.

"There's an installation by Diaviks Mine," Kalith says at last, with his cheek against the Spider's chest. "Old Cabal turbine, I think. It's full of Hive now. When I dropped into it, there were half a dozen thralls squatting on the floor as though they were waiting for me."

His fingers trace beneath the Spider's jaw, over and over again. "When a blade goes through them, they bleed green flame," he says, soft. "They burn like paper, screaming themselves to cinders. When a Hive knight goes down, the carapace they leave behind is like a suit of armor; the ogres fall in a thick heap of meat. But the thralls just evaporate into fire."

The Spider drags blunt nails down Kalith's back, feeling the fabric of his robes catch and snag--feeling the way Kalith arches and hisses, grinding down on the Spider's thigh. "More," he whispers, and inhales a long cool draught of ether.

"Kingship Dock," says Kalith, and his voice has grown tight and strained. His skin radiates heat; his racing heart is a drumbeat in the stale air. "Some minor Scorn chieftain making a bid for the Landing. His people came for me with fire, torches and burning censers. The whole place burned. But I burned brighter, and I burned them out. And when I was done, I put an arrow through their chieftain's cheek, right in the gap of his helmet. The ether leaked out of him like a thick cloud. I could almost taste it--like smoke from the old diesel oil we find sometimes in caches on Earth, stowed before the Golden Age."

"Have you ever tasted pure ether?" the Spider asks.

Kalith's hand stills at his throat. "No," he says.

"Would you like to?"

Kalith looks up at the Spider with wide, dark eyes. The Spider can never entirely get over how dark a human's eyes are. "Yes," he says.

The Spider draws in a deep breath of ether and holds it, waiting.

This is not the first time that Kalith has worked the Spider's rebreather free. He knows every catch, every port, every hidden hook that links it to the helmet--and although his heart is hammering, his hands are sure and steady.

He sways up, one foot braced between the Spider's legs, and presses his soft mouth to the Spider's to sip the ether from it.

A trail of cold silvery light flows between them. It tastes like nothing else; it tastes the way starlight looks, the way cool night rain feels on bare skin. It tastes like joy so keen that it shades into madness. Kalith twines his arms around the Spider's neck, presses his brow to the hard metal faceplate of the Spider's helmet, and drinks the ether from between his teeth with a wracked sound that he's never made before.

"Tell me more," the Spider whispers, when the ether is gone and only the kiss remains.

And Kalith does. He tells the Spider how it feels to sight down a bow and feel the arrow loose; he tells him the deep satisfaction of a perfect shot, so clean that it knocks the ether from a drekh's frail body. He tells of shanks bursting into sparking fragments, servitors whirling and smoking, the way a pike skids when its rider's been knocked sprawling. With his mouth against the Spider's throat, he tells how it feels to dance through a horde of enemies with a sun-hot blade in his hand.

All for him. The blood and ash, the fire and steel, the jagged-edged swathe that Kalith cuts through the Tangled Shore--this is for the Spider alone.

They trade breaths of ether for stories of blood, until Kalith's eyes gleam with golden light and his lips are trembling with cold. He clings as though the Spider is his anchor point, as though the universe pivots around him.

At Kalith's back, the viewport opens. The dancing lights of interplanetary travel have faded into a field of stars. As the Spider watches, the blue curve of a planet slowly swings into view.

For a moment, his gut aches with longing for a planet of his own.

Sentimental.

Kalith turns at the changing of the light. He smiles, ether-drunk, luminous, as the Spider's pilot maneuvers them through the thermosphere of his homeworld. "We're here."

For the first time since they left the Shore, the Spider takes a deep breath.


End file.
